The Informal Experts’ Workshop of the Informal Network of DAC Heads of Information/Communication was hosted from March 19-20 by the German Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development at the Universitätsclub, Bonn, Germany, in collaboration with the OECD Development Centre.

Development communicators and educators are constantly struggling for greater resources to build public understanding of global development issues. While public awareness campaigns, which entail information, communication and education, have been successful - they have built awareness about specific development issues and mobilized people to lobby for policy change - pressure is increasing to broaden the scope of this work and to increase its effectiveness in a complex, globalizing world.

Establishing a culture of evaluation in development communication, advocacy and education is a challenge that most actors in this sector are confronted with. Building on previous evaluation work concerning development education, this workshop aimed to address common challenges across the spectrum of awareness-raising activities with expert evaluators.

Day I addresses the basics of How to Evaluate. The meaning of evaluation as well as the uses and abuses of evaluation were discused. Expert evaluators took participants through a comprehensive evaluation exercise in the breakout groups.

Day II built on the first day by focusing on Getting Evaluation Right. It tackled unresolved challenges that participants associate with evaluating development communication, advocacy and education and zoomed-in on concrete actions that participants could take home from the workshop.

Context: the Informal Development Communication Network of DAC Members

This workshop on evaluation, which BMZ offered to host, is part of the work programme of the Informal Network of DAC Development Communicators (DAC DevCom Network) coordinated by the OECD Development Centre. The aim is to provide an opportunity for policy makers (members of the DAC DevCom Network) and practitioners (usually civil society organisations) who are concerned about evaluation to address common challenges with evaluation experts.
ParticipantsExperts participating in the Workshop had previous experience in evaluation and came from OECD and non-Member governments, multilateral and regional institutions, and civil society. In the spirit of an informal workshop, participants were invited to express themselves in their personal – not representative – capacities. The Chatham House Rule applied. (Participants list)